The present invention relates to the hydrogenation of benzene and substituted benzenes with elemental hydrogen and a solid catalyst to produce cyclohexene and substituted cyclohexenes. The present invention also relates to certain novel compounds containing group IVa metal hydrides on a carbonaceous support.
The hydrogenation of benzene and substituted benzenes is a well know reaction, typically employing various transition metals such as nickel, palladium or platinum as the catalyst. Typically, when benzene itself is hydrogenated with the nickel or group VIII metal catalyst, the product mixture is predominately or entirely cyclohexane. For many applications, such as the production of cyclohexanol, cyclohexene is the preferred product.
Group IVa metals, and especially zirconium, are well known to form hydrides which are useful either for hydrogen storage or as a moderator in a nuclear reactor. While the thermodynamics, structure and metallurgy of zirconium hydride and its alloys has been well studied for these conventional applications, the use of group IVa metal hydrides as catalysts for the hydrogenation of aromatics has not been suggested.